The passing of John O’Mara: New England lost a lion
The grassroots New England patriots lost a friend and a champion when John O'Mara passed away during the Labor Day weekend. He was the prime example of what a dedicated, thoughtful and highly organized political activist with constitutional convictions could be and should do. He always impressed us with his unwavering dedication to the founding principles of the Republic, to the uniqueness of New England and Boston in promoting the right causes—since our state started the fight against the atrocious Fugitive Slave Act (1850) culminating in the foundation of the Republican Party in opposition to the party of slavery, the Democratic Party. Serendipitously, both of us met John at the Friday Morning Group (thanks in part to the grassroots activism of "Citizens for Limited Taxation," the group energized by the late Barbara Anderson) a mere few miles from Concord where Henry David Thoreau initiated Civil Disobedience by refusing to pay taxes to enforce that infamous Act. Civil disobedience is a fundamental instrument and concept in American politics in times of crisis. Without Civil Disobedience the Civil Rights movement that ended legal racial segregation would have never existed.
It is not surprising that in the civil rights environment after the Civil War, the Republican Party maintained its supremacy in Massachusetts's politics—from Lincoln to the Calvin Coolidge presidency. After that the descendants of the waves of European immigrants (except during the Eisenhower presidency) began controlling the electoral process in the Commonwealth. Subsequently the Democratic political machine followed the lead both of the Kennedy clan and of Tip O'Neil's ground tactics. This machine proved highly effective in co-opting, and benefiting from, the Lyndon B. Johnson's and Jimmy Carter's Washington power grabs. With further assistance from Bill Weld and others, the Democrats almost successfully destroyed the Republican legacy and brand in Massachusetts.
